Man Drake: Anatomia Publica, Barbican Pit - dance review

When choreographer Tomeo Vergés’s grandfather went missing in action, his grandmother remarried. But when the soldier returned alive, the trio decided to continue living together in an unconventional ménage à trois. This is the basis for Vergés’s Anatomia Publica, named after the public dissections that were a common spectacle in the 17th century, performed by his company Man Drake.

Here, Vergés’s aim is to dissect the emotion below the surface, rather than the flesh and bones, and he chooses a boldly original device with which to do it: movements repeated over and over in tiny fragments, like a stuck record or a series of agitated gifs, so that an innocuous gesture — putting a hand in a pocket or unscrewing a bottle — becomes a ferociously nervous tic. It makes the situation on stage less like domestic bliss à la Jules et Jim, more like a 50-minute panic attack.

Vergés cleverly reveals emotional subtext (and humour) by hiding one action within another. So the lean-in for an embrace, stuck at the halfway point, looks like someone is about to get throttled. But that’s as far as it goes. There’s no doubting the technical accomplishment of the performers but as for getting to the meat of these complex, loaded relationships — it needs a sharper knife.